Obama Is Lost in the Mideast Bazaar

Amid the Syrian fiasco, the president finds a Russian eager to steer him safely home.

Fouad Ajami

Sept. 12, 2013 7:09 p.m. ET

There is a trick in the great labyrinthine bazaars of the Middle East: petty hucksters luring the vacationing franjis into the market maze and then getting paid to lead them out. As dusk looms, the unnerved outsider is always glad to be steered to familiar surroundings. In the matter of Syria, and America's staggeringly inept diplomacy, Vladimir Putin is the clever trickster who has seized upon an unsuspecting prey. The Russian strongman now proposes a way out for an American leader desperately searching for deliverance.